The Proposed Walvis-Bay Port-Centric Hub Development: A Blessing or a Curse?

Abstract

Many developing countries wish to become the “gateway” to a region or part of a continent.  One strategy involves encouraging logistics cluster development.  Such clusters support global supply chains and enable the growth of the host country through the resulting trade as well as providing direct and indirect employment opportunities during the build and subsequent operation of the hub. Namibia has a desire to become the gateway to southern Africa and the SADC region.  This article builds on research on Caribbean cluster potential  (Lambourdiere et al., 2012), and Namibian logistics (Jenkins et al., 2012) to identify the potential benefits, drawbacks and risks of such a strategy.  It was explorative and adopted a critical realism approach to examine tendencies, experiences, and perceptions of reality to form a comprehensive picture.  It was found that, although there are great potential opportunities, there are also serious attendant risks.  Therefore, to become a successful gateway, Namibia and its logistics industry will need to adopt a long-term approach that covers human capital as well as the more obvious infrastructure developments and is accompanied by a significant change in attitude to service provision.

Keywords: Namibian logistics, logistics clusters, emerging economies, global supply chains, gateways.